White House Meeting Next Week May Determine Fate of Energy/climate Bill

The climate bill remained in the Senate's version of limbo yesterday after Democrats emerged from closed-door negotiations without any clear consensus on what version of the legislation -- or blend of the different options -- they should rally behind.

The all-hands-on deck meeting of the Senate Democrats was designed to help illuminate the way forward for what should be included in the package of climate and energy legislation Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to bring to the floor next month, but members attempting to thrash out what the bill should like did not get any closer to refining the final recipe for the bill.

At the caucus meeting all eyes were on a handful of senators who armed themselves with videos and posters of smoke stacks to help sell three competing versions of climate and energy legislation, but their presentations failed to curry immediate favor for a unified way forward.

"There's not a unanimous consensus on the need to price carbon," said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) after emerging from the meeting. "There's a unanimous consensus on the need to move us towards energy independence, away from fossil fuels, away from petroleum."

Similarly, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said "not yet" when asked if any of the approaches offered in the room could garner 60 votes in the Senate.

Senate Democrats heard from Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.) whose bill creates a national renewable energy standard but does not place a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases, Sen. Maria Cantwell (Wash.) who favors a "cap and dividend" approach, Sens. John Kerry (Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), whose legislation would put a price on carbon, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), who emphasized the economic importance of moving forward with legislation now.

While Reid told reporters yesterday that the hourlong meeting was "productive" and allowed for "full, frank discussion," the caucus ultimately ran out of time directly after the presentations, spurring Reid to announce he plans to hold a follow-up caucus meeting next week at which senators could ask questions and engage in debate over the varying proposals.

"We are not going to tell you today what we're going to have in this legislation because it's a work in progress," Reid told reporters. "The reason we are coming back for another caucus is we understand the importance of this issue. We have no one saying no, we have everyone saying yes. It is a question of how we will be moving forward."

With no new answers about what the path to 60 votes may look like, Senate leaders working on the issue from both sides of the aisle will head to the White House next week for a bipartisan meeting that aims to help knit together the "best ideas from all the legislation to address this on a comprehensive basis," White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Charlie Rose earlier this week. Whether or not the Democratic caucus will have time to meet again before that White House meeting remains unclear.

Competing measures

While Bingaman and Cantwell said after the caucus they are pushing for ways to work together with Reid to develop a comprehensive legislative package that would lead to more clean energy jobs in general, Lieberman and Kerry continued to lobby for their specific bill, which aims to slash emissions more than 80 percent below 2005 levels by mid-century via a mandatory cap on carbon.

"Our bill, the American Power Act creates more jobs, gives us more energy independence and reduces pollution more than any other bill," Lieberman said. "Part of the reason that's so is we have taken a lot from our colleagues Sen. Bingaman and Sen. Cantwell," he said.

The Cantwell bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), would essentially take the "trade" part out of cap and trade and require producers and importers of fossil fuels, but not users of them, to pay for "carbon shares." Three-quarters of the resulting revenue would be returned to the public, they say.